


Arrow

by SLWalker



Category: due South
Genre: AU, Post-Apocalyptic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-01-29
Updated: 2011-01-29
Packaged: 2017-10-15 05:43:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 734
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/157607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SLWalker/pseuds/SLWalker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A brief, post-apocalyptic snippet with no explanation.  Past F/K, T/V.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Arrow

Ray sometimes wondered if it hurt him to draw it, or if the real pain was in what he drew for himself.

Ray sometimes wondered if he even felt pain at all, anymore.

His Ben stared up from the page, a grin playing across his lips, sprawled on pillows in the frame of sunlight from the window, half covered in a flannel blanket. It was a really damn accurate image, too. Wild, dark hair and sharp eyes, laugh lines just starting to really show in the corners. Ray remembered that moment; remembered the warmth of the fireplace, the smell, the taste of the air. It seemed like, when everything else faded away little by little, lost to time, the picture was able to fix it all in his head and give him something to hold onto, something to remind him that there had been a world _before_.

He had lost hope that there would be a world _after_.

The aurora danced green and blue above spruce, pine, dark shapes stretching skyward, casting light down to the fire, gold light dancing back up to the sky. They sat on either side of the fire, half-sheltered in front of an old service station building that was being reclaimed by the elements.

Ben would have loved it.

Even now, the past-tense made something in Ray's heart clench.

Sometimes he thought maybe they should quit. Settle down. Try to... be something to each other. Build something like a life. Stop searching for something that wasn't there. Sometimes, he even started to say something, but then he would get a steady, unrelenting look, and all the words died, and they packed up and kept moving. Ray was so damn tired. But he got it, too.

Sometimes, men could become arrows.

He remembered the night it was drawn; he still talked then, hoping to get a conversation doing, and it was the first time he ever referred to Ben in past-tense, and then something inside of him fucking _broke_ , and he was sobbing, bitter and ragged sounds by firelight, frantic as he started rattling off everything he remembered, every tiny detail of his lover he could pull out through wretched tears until he was screaming at silent trees into a silent world.

The next morning, he had been given the picture. It took another two days before Ray could move again. Could get over the overwhelming sense of loss, and guilt for referring to his lover in past-tense, could go back to pretending that maybe they'd find them out here somewhere, in a world gone quiet.

Now, he had given up pretending and he had given up the present and future tense, and he had given up everything; he stayed because there was nothing else to do, no where else to go. Seasons passed. Mankind was gone. Still, they searched for what was no longer there.

The wrong Mountie sat across the fire, golden and quiet, sharpening his hunting knife on a whetstone. The wrong Ray watched from over the picture of his lover, feeling the weight of years. Sometimes he remembered flickers of the world _before_ ; remembered the man sitting there when he still smiled, still bounced around like a deranged pinball, all vapid and goofy and sweet. Then the fire flared, and then the image was gone.

He carried his own pictures, drew often on any piece of paper he could find, with any kind of material, obsessive and unrelenting. Ray didn't know if he ever looked at them again once they were drawn. Sometimes he got to see them. The other Ray. The only thing the wrong Ray remembered well about the man was his eyes, green and dancing and smug and alive.

The wrong Mountie never quit searching; flying true on a course. The bowstring drawn, released, when his Ray vanished like all the rest.

The wrong Ray sometimes thought about settling down, making a life, maybe together. Something of man clawed back from nature, something to ride out their days with. But he knew it wouldn't happen. They were on a course that would see them buried to the crest in the earth, or burned up in the sky.

He listened to the whetstone, and then he looked down at the image of Ben, smiling at him.

Ray smiled back.

When he slept that night, he dreamed of two golden arrows, flying into the sun.


End file.
